Vale Banjar Hills Retreat!

 

Klicke auf das Foto um es zu vergrössern

 

"Wir möchten uns kurz vorstellen und erzählen, wie wir unseren Weg nach Bali gefunden haben.

Wir sind Anke und Erik, um die 50 Jahre alt, kommen aus Deutschland und leben seit Mitte 2014 auf Bali, Indonesien. Unser Wunsch zum geeigneten Zeitpunkt Deutschland den Rücken zu kehren stand schon lange fest bevor wir im Januar 2014 Urlaub auf Bali machten. Wie die meisten Besucher haben auch wir uns gleich in diese zauberhafte Insel verliebt und nach einer Woche schon stand fest: Hier wollen wir bleiben.

Der „Zufall“ hat uns ungeplant zu diesem kleinen Stückchen Paradies namens Banjar Hills Retreat im ursprünglichen Norden Balis geführt, in welchem wir nur eine Nacht verweilten. Doch in dieser kurzen Zeit fanden wir heraus, dass die Eigentümer es weitergeben wollten und wir entschlossen uns spontan, zuzugreifen. Eine Entscheidung, die wir bis heute nicht bereuen. Drei kleine, zu vermietende Villen, ein großer erfrischender Pool als Herzstück des Retreats und als Highlight ein Terrassenrestaurant mit atemberaubender Aussicht: Panorama-Blick über den gesamten grünen Küstenstreifen, dahinter in ca. 3 Kilometern Luftlinie Frontal-Ansicht auf die scheinbar unendliche Weite der Java-See. Ein Traum.

Da wir hier ein kleines, intimes Anwesen mit wirklich liebevollem Personal übernahmen, stand fest, dem Ganzen einen persönlichen, familiären Charakter zu verleihen, fern von jedem Massentourismus.

Unsere direkte Nachbarschaft zum einzigen buddhistischen Kloster Balis, dem Brahma Vihara, und den Heiligen Quellen, Air Panas Banjar, gibt auch unserem neuen Zuhause eine ganz einzigartige Note, ein Platz an dem man wirklich „runter kommen“ kann vom stressigen Leben in der westlichen Welt. Hier hat man sowohl die Gelegenheit sich wieder auf sich selbst zu besinnen, sich zu entspannen, sich verwöhnen zu lassen, und/oder diesen Ort als Ausgangspunkt für die Erkundung der Insel zu nutzen.

In den ersten Monaten, in denen uns überwiegend Familie und Freunde besuchten, haben wir die Räumlichkeiten mit viel Liebe zum Detail verschönert und jedem Ort in unserem Hotel eine herzliche und individuelle Note verliehen. Nun sind wir bereit, mit allen Bali-Interessierten unsere neue Heimat zu teilen. Unser Ziel ist es, jedem Gast nicht nur das Gefühl zu geben, herzlich willkommen zu sein, sondern ihm seinen Aufenthalt bei uns zu einem unvergesslichen Erlebnis werden zu lassen. Wir organisieren vorgeplant oder auch spontan vor Ort alles was das Herz begehrt und machbar ist: Trekking-Touren durch atemberaubende Wasserfälle und Reisterrassen, Delfin-Touren mit Sonnenaufgang auf dem Meer, Tauch- und Schnorchel-Ausflüge zu den buntesten Korallenriffen Südostasiens, Dorfleben und Tempel-Kultur des ursprünglichen Balis oder sich zwischen Massagen, Mani-und Pediküre einfach an unserem herrlichen Pool die kulinarische Vielfalt der indonesischen Küche genießen ... Auch Kurztrips zu den Nachbarinseln sind problemlos machbar: Schnorcheln und Chillen auf den berühmten Gili-Inseln von Lombok, Komodo-Warane auf der Jagd erleben auf Komodo, oder die Tempelanlage von Bodobudur auf Java zu bestaunen! Alles ist bei uns möglich.

Unser Konzept sieht vor, euch – basierend auf den individuellen Interessen, der verfügbaren Zeit und des Budgets – den Traumurlaub zu ermöglichen, von dem ihr schon immer geträumt habt. Wir werden unser Bestes dafür geben."

 

 

So schrieben Anke und Erik (Ralf) auf ihrer Webseite banjarhills.com.

 

 

Vielleicht war ihr Bestes nicht gut genug oder sie konnten damit kein Geld machen denn die Webseite wie auch sie sind inzwischen wieder weg.

Ihre Abschiedsworte waren:

"DANKE BALI ...

So, nun heisst es Abschied nehmen von Banjar Hills in Bali. Zwei Jahre hier zu sein, war eine tolle Erfahrung. Schönes Wetter, tolle Landschaft, ständig lächelnde, freundliche Menschen, leckeren Fisch u.a., sprich das, was uns in Deutschland oft fehlt. Dennoch möchte ich hier auch nicht verschweigen, dass das "Urlaubsfeeling", dass man zu Beginn hat, sich überraschend schnell verflüchtigt und es auch hier einen "Alltag" gibt. Und plötzlich gibt es auch hier Stromrechnungen, Verkehrspolizisten und Behördengänge ... Ich möchte diese Erfahrung nicht missen, doch man merkt schon in sehr vielen Dingen, dass man mit Deutschland und auch seiner (Heimat)Kultur enger verbunden ist, als man es sich eingestehen möchte. Und ich möchte betonen, dass entgegen allen Gemeckers in Deutschland unser Land SO viele Vorzüge gegenüber so vielen anderen Ländern besitzt z.B. Gesundheitssystem, Bildung, soziale und rechtliche Sicherheit, Sicherheit im Allgemeinen (ja, immer noch), Entfaltungs-möglichkeiten, Chancengleichheit, um nur einige zu nennen. Wenn man dann, wie hier, in andere Kulturen eintauchen kann und an der Basis die Sorgen und Nöte der Menschen mitbekommt, muss ich feststellen, dass sich diese im Prinzip kaum von denen der unseren unterscheiden. Auch hier wollen die Menschen nur ein glückliches Leben mit ihren Familien führen, ihre Kinder gesund und mit Bildungschancen aufwachsen sehen, ihren Platz und ein Zuhause finden ... Was wir aber lernen können, ist, dass auch ein "einfaches" Leben glücklich machen kann, sprich, dass es nicht viel bedarf, um Glück zu empfinden. Die Hilfsbereitschaft untereinander und gegenüber Fremden(!) hier, der Zusammenhalt von "Familie", Leichtigkeit zu leben und - vor allem - jedem Menschen erst einmal mit einem FREUNDLICHEN LÄCHELN zu begegnen ... all das sind Dinge, die ich hier lernen konnte und hoffe, sie nicht zu vergessen.

Am Ende ist halt nichts für ewig, so auch nicht Bali. Doch nichts wird mir das nehmen können, was wir hier gelebt und erfahren haben ... ausser vielleicht irgendwann die Demenz (lol). Und ich bin dankbar dafür ... Danke Bali !!"

 

 

Ich "entdeckte" Banjar Hills in 2006 - siehe hier - und verbrachte mehrere Wochen über mehrere Jahre in diesem Stückchen Paradies - meistens als einziger Gast denn für die meisten Touristen war es zu abgelegen. Für mich war es perfekt: völlige Ruhe in der ich endlos meine Bücher las und mitternachts im Pool planschte.

 

 

Die australischen 'Besitzer' aus Canberra, Mark, Jeremy, Anthony, David & Sharon (Ausländer können in Indonesien keine Immobilien 'besitzen' sondern nur mieten) haben es inzwischen zugemacht und dann verkauft.

 

 

Wieder hat sich ein Inseltraum ausgeträumt! Vale Banjar Hills Retreat!

 

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep

 

He was a little boy at the time the "Great War", who then lived through the miseries of the Treaty of Versailles as a teenager; whose promising career as a "Volkswirt" was cut short by the next war, from which he then came back as a physically disabled and emotionally dead man.

This man was my father who was born on the 9th of December 1907 and who died on this day in 1984. I attended the funeral of this man whom I only ever knew as an emotionally dead man who never showed any sign of affection towards me. Once a year I would run home from school, excited to show him my top marks, and was met with his blank stare.

I built myself a new life in Australia, after which I revisited home and was greeted with an indifference as if I'd just been down to the corner store to buy him the one bottle of beer he held on to for the whole day as he sat, always in his dressing gown, by the window and unseeingly watched the world pass him by. He was the stranger that was my father.

I lived and worked in Athens in Greece in 1983 and flew to Germany to sit with him for a week but he no longer recognised me. I flew back a few months later to attend the funeral but I couldn't weep. I was as emotionally dead as he had been, and yet, as his coffin slowly moved towards the curtain, I shuddered with defiant disbelief that this was the end of his long and painful life.

Even if we understand that dying is but a token of our existential luckiness, even if we understand that we are borrowed stardust, bound to be returned to the universe that made it — a universe itself slouching toward nothingness as its stars are slowly burning out their energy to leave a cold austere darkness of pure spacetime - that we are "3,147,740,103,497,276,498,750,208,327 atoms, and consist of 63.7 percent oxygen, 21.0 percent carbon, 10.1 percent hydrogen, 2.6 percent nitrogen, 1.4 percent calcium, 1.1 percent phosphorous, plus a smattering of the ninety-odd other chemical elements created in stars", it is still hard to understand that in our cremation, "water evaporates; carbon and nitrogen combine with oxygen to make gaseous carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, which floats skyward and mingles with the air, and most of our calcium and phosphorous bakes into a reddish brown residue which scatters in soil and in wind." ["Mr g" by Alan Lightman]

As Alan Lightman continues to write: "Released from their temporary confinement, the atoms slowly spread out and diffuse through the atmosphere. In sixty days' time, they could be found in every handful of air on the planet. In one hundred days, some of the atoms, the vaporous water, had condensed into liquid and returned to the surface as rain, to be drunk and ingested by animals and plants. Some of the atoms were absorbed by light-utilising organisms and transformed into tissues and tubules and leaves. Some were breathed in by oxygen creatures, incorporated into organs and bone.

Pregnant women ate animals and plants made of the atoms. A year later, babies contained some of the atoms... Several years after the death, millions of children contained some of the atoms. And their children would contain some of the atoms as well. Their minds contained part of the mind.

Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this person? It is not likely. Will they feel what that person felt, will their memories have flickering strokes of that person's memories? No, it is not possible. But it will let them have their own brief glimpse of the Void, just at the moment as they pass from living to dead, from animate to inanimate, from consciousness to that which has no consciousness. For a moment, they will understand infinity.

And the individual atoms, cycled through the body and then cycled through wind and water and soil, cycled through generations and generations of living creatures and minds, will repeat and connect and make a whole out of parts. Although without memory, they make a memory. Although impermanent, they make a permanence. Although scattered, they make a totality."

Animated by electrical impulses and temporal interactions of matter, our finite minds cannot grasp any of this. Perhaps this poem helps:

 

VATI born 9.12.1907 - died 31.1.1984     Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow, I am the softly falling snow. I am the gentle showers of rain, I am the fields of ripening grain. I am in the morning hush, I am in the graceful rush Of beautiful birds in circling flight, I am the starshine of the night. I am in the flowers that bloom, I am in a quiet room. I am in the birds that sing, I am in each lovely thing. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there. I did not die.

 

 

I've just found an old picture of me

 

 

Why do I read? I just can't help myself. I read to learn and to grow, to laugh and to be motivated. I read to understand things I've never been exposed to. I read when I'm crabby, when I've just said monumentally dumb things to the people I love.

I read for strength to help me when I feel broken, discouraged, and afraid. I read when I'm angry at the whole world. I read when everything is going right. I read to find hope.

I read because I'm made up not just of skin and bones, of sights, feelings, and a deep need for chocolate, but I'm also made up of words.

Words describe my thoughts and what's hidden in my heart. Words are alive -- when I've found a story that I love, I read it again and again, like playing a favorite song over and over.

Reading isn't passive -- I enter the story with the characters, breathe their air, feel their frustrations, scream at them to stop when they're about to do something stupid, cry with them, laugh with them.

Reading for me, is spending time with a friend. A book is a friend. You can never have too many."

Thank you, Gary Paulsen! It's exactly what I would've said if I'd had the words for it.

 

Den sidste Sydhavs Trader

 

 

I've written elsewhere about "German Harry" who was immortalised by W. Somerset Maugham in his short story of the same name. I first heard about "German Harry" when I lived and worked on Thursday Island in 1977 and the story has stayed with me since. Then I received this email from a reader in Sweden:

 

"Hi, you have on your website a page written by Somerset Maugham about a man called German Harry. That man did exist and lived a life that was almost incredible.

He was born in Denmark in 1850 and died in Sydney in 1914. His real name was Jeppe Sören Christensen. Numerous people have told stories about him, Somerset Maugham, the Australian author Albert F. Ellis, captain C. A. W. Mockton and O. M. Sörensen, the latter a Dane who lived with him for 4 years and wrote a book about his life. It's this book that I have, published in 1941. It's in Swedish so I have to translate small parts for you.

He ran away from home when he was 13, learned German (that's why he was later nicknamed German Harry), came to England, got married, started a pub, sold the pub and went with his family to Cooktown in Australia, abandoned the family and settled in Samarai, New Guinea, made fortunes and lost them just as quickly.

He became an excellent skipper, often sailing alone around Australia and New Guinea. He saved sailors wrecked at Sydney's South Head with such skills that he was appointed Chief Pilot by the Board of Trade, presented by the mayor in Sydney.

Well, there is a whole book about German Harry, but this will do for now!

Kind Regards,
Patrick Lindahl,
Västra Frölunda, Sweden"

 

That was ten years ago. Patrick is now in retirement and has finally enough time to translate the book, all sixteen chapters of it. He's proceeding slowly, one chapter at a time, which I then polish off a bit around the edges. Here's our work in progress so far:

 

---

Author's foreword

German Harry is one of the most adventurous figures in Danish sailing history. Ever since Jeppe Sören Christensen, to call him by his real name, ran away from home in Guldager Parish between Esbjerg and Varde in 1863 at the age of thirteen to go to sea, until he closed his eyes for the last time in Sydney in 1914, he experienced so many things as a sailor, smuggler and trader in the South Seas, that his wilde adventures and exploits made him famous all over the world.

German Harry's reputation attracted the attention of many writers. Somerset Maugham wrote of him in his short story in the "Cosmopolitans". The Australian writer Albert F. Ellis tells of him in his book "Adventuring in Coral Seas" and Captain C. A. W. Mockton, at one time Chief of Police at Samarai and in New Guinea, mentions him in "Some Experiences of a New Guinea Magistrate."

Of his own countrymen, I am probably the one who knew him best. For four years I lived with him, accompanied him on a long series of his adventurous journeys, and was with him in his last moments.

On the basis of his own and others' stories, his diaries and notes, I have tried here to give a sober and authoritative portrayal of this extraordinary Danish sailor, the last trader of the South Seas.

Copenhagen, April 1940.
O. M. Børup Sørensen."

---

 

To continue, click here - and come back occasionally to check up on the progress we're making.

 

Comfort is the worst addiction

 

 

I am now happy enough to live in a house of my own, even in a single room of my own, as I have always loved my books and my things, but in the past - and sometimes still now - there was always another self, that was drawn by some instinct to live adventurously, to live by the skin of my teeth while I still had most of them.

I could have made a great deal more money had I stayed in one place, but I didn't just want to make money - though there were times when I wanted nothing more than to make more money - I always wanted to find that perfect spot in this world before I was carted off to the other one.

There are people who go to the same seaside resort every summer of their lives, and they are - well, that sort of people, and very nice and very sane people they are, too, but with me, boredom always drove me on. I always felt that there was always, always something more which is why I found myself unable to rest. Ever-changing places, ever-changing languages, ever-changing people, and ever-changing jobs, that, for me, was life.

If I had to work to live - and thank God for the necessity! working hard is the passport to an interesting life - a thousand times more I wanted to work in jobs that were ever-changing with people that were ever-changing in places that were ever-changing. I knew that the world would be a chaotic place if everyone were like me, and I feel sorry for and apologise to the people - and the one wonderful person in particular - whom I disappointed along the way, but that was me. I still don't know why.

Of course, one is never really happy travelling; one is most happy in remembering. I now have a lot of time doing that, in my own house, in my own room, having finally become addicted to the worst addiction: comfort.

 

The Sense of an Ending

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

“In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when that moment came, our lives – and time itself – would speed up” recalls Tony Webster, now 60ish, middle class and middling, the ideal narrator in this book. He is bright, but not too bright; likeable but not a saint; and a survivor confident that he has stumbled upon most, if not quite all of the answers. “We live in time – it holds us and moulds us – but I’ve never felt I understood it very well.”

He is resigned to his ordinariness; even satisfied with it, in a bloody-minded way. In one light, his life has been a success: a career followed by comfortable retirement, an amiable marriage followed by amicable divorce, a child seen safely into her own domestic security. On harsher inspection, "I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and succeeded – and how pitiful that was." Barnes is brutally incisive on the diminishments of age: now that the sense of his own ending is coming into focus, Tony apprehends that "the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss", that he has already experienced the first death: that of the possibility of change.

“What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him . . . Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels?”

Who are you? How can you be sure? What if you're not who you think you are? What if you never were? These are the questions this book asks. You arrive at the end of this book breathless and befuddled, duped into the idea that a life's conclusion brings some kind of wisdom. Not always. Apparently sometimes there are simply just more questions.

Cleverly, Julian Barnes compresses a story with long temporal sweep into a scant 150 pages. (You can imagine a younger or a less confident author taking about three times as long to make the same points.) The cleverness resides not only in the way he has caught just how second-rate Webster's mind is without driving the reader to tears of boredom but in the way he has effectively doubled the length of the book by giving us a final revelation that obliges us to reread it. Without overstating his case in the slightest, Barnes's story is a meditation on the unreliability and falsity of memory; on not getting it the first time round - and possibly not even the second, either. Barnes's revelation is richly ambiguous.

Read this book. It may help you to make sense of it all, or at least realise that it doesn't make sense.

 

Most people lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them

 

 

For most of my life, when I was still a scrawny little runt, people have been taken the piss out of me. I wish they were still around to save me from having to go to the toilet two or three times during the night, as I always have trouble getting back to sleep.

Often I grab a book and read until my eyes fall shut again, but I don't make the mistake of starting a big book. Instead, I pick up a volume of W. Somerset Maugham's short stories which I can read and read again, each time revealing a little bit more. One of my favourites is "The Lotus Eater":

 

 

"Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them, and though some repine, looking upon themselves as round pegs in square holes, and think that if things had been different they might have made a much better showing, the greater part accept their lot, if not with serenity, at all events with resignation. They are like train-cars travelling forever on the selfsame rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, inevitably, till they can go no longer and then are sold as scrap-iron. It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands. When you do, it is worth while having a good look at him.

That was why I was curious to meet Thomas Wilson. It was an interesting and a bold thing he had done. Of course the end was not yet and until the experiment was concluded it was impossible to call it successful. But from what I had heard it seemed he must be an odd sort of fellow and I thought I should like to know him. I had been told he was reserved, but I had a notion that with patience and tact I could persuade him to confide in me. I wanted to hear the facts from his own lips. People exaggerate, they love to romanticize, and I was quite prepared to discover that his story was not nearly so singular as I had been led to believe."

Are your eyes still wide open? Okay then, continue to read here.

 

"Their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement."

 

 

There are all sorts of expats in Bali, hiding out in this shifting community of the planet's 'homeless and assetless', languidly killing time like characters in a Graham Greene novel. They are Westerners who have been so ill-treated and badly wounded by life that they've stopped the whole struggle and decided to camp out in Bali indefinitely.

There they can live in a gorgeous house for $200 a month, perhaps taking a young Balinese man or woman as a companion, where they can drink before noon without getting any static about it, where they can make a bit of money exporting a bit of furniture for somebody. But generally, all they are doing is seeing to it that nothing serious will ever be asked of them again. These are not bums, mind you. This is a very high grade of people, multinational, talented and clever. Everyone used to be something once (generally 'married' or 'employed'); now they are all united by the absence of the one thing they seem to have surrendered completely and forever: ambition. To quote my favourite writer Joseph Conrad:'... in all they said - in their actions, in their looks, in their persons - could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence.' Needless to say, there's a lot of drinking.

Having come to Bali after they've made a mess of their lives back home, they decide they've had it with Western women, and they go marry some tiny, sweet, obedient Balinese teenage girl. They think this pretty little girl will make them happy, make their lives easy. Good luck to them because it's still two human beings trying to get along, and so it's going to become complicated because relationships are always complicated. Some have their hearts broken, others just their bank balance, some actually make some sort of living selling real estate to other Westerners who've fallen for this misguided dream of a Balinese paradise.

Of course, Bali is not such a bad place to putter away your life, ignoring the passing of the days. Most Bali expats, when you ask them how long they've lived there, aren't really sure. For one thing, they aren't really sure how much time has passed since they moved to Bali. But for another thing, it's like they aren't really sure if they do live there. They belong to nowhere, unanchored. Some of them like to imagine that they're just hanging out for a while, just running the engine on idle at the traffic light, waiting for the signal to change. But after several years of that they start to wonder ... will they ever leave? Conrad again: 'Their death was the only event of their fantastic existence that seemed to have a reasonable certitude of achievement.'"

I wrote this many years ago after several trips to Bali, but the same could be written about many expats in many other Asian countries as well as many islands in the South Pacific where I even befriended some of them.

One in the Solomon Islands comes to mind and another in the Kingdom of Tonga, and I admit there is much to enjoy in their lazy company, in those long Sunday afternoons spent at brunch, drinking beer and talking about nothing. Still, the outsider who's just passing through, feels somewhat like Dorothy in the poppy fields of Oz. "Be careful! Don't fall asleep in this narcotic meadow, or you could doze away the rest of your life here!"

 

You never know what you'll find

 

 

When I started with personal computers (after having mainlined on mainframes for several years), they still had an A: and B: drive into which you inserted (very) floppy 5-1/4-inch disks and which ran on DOS Version 2.0 (which is when DOS began supporting harddisks).

But the harddisks only became usable after they had been formatted - twice: first you did a low-level format. Then, if you were using DOS Version 3.3, you could partition the harddisk into more than one logical drive (but only from DOS Version 4.0 could you create partitions greater than 32 MB). Then you did a high-level format on each partition to instal the operating system. Finally, you created the two all-important AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files to load the various devices and make the operating system run properly (including instructions on how to use the computer's then very limited memory with the HIMEM.SYS command). Then there were the pesky Interrupts (IRQ) and woe betide you if you had assigned the same IRQ to two different devices: have you ever seen thick black smoke come out of a Point-of-Sale docket printer? I have and it was all my own fault! ☺

And then came Windows and all these wonderful 'hands-on' things became things of the past as the computer did everything for you - well, sort of - and you had no idea how. Like this morning when my laptop froze up on me - sort of - and I had no idea why. Then I remembered the F11 function key: switch on your laptop while at the same time hammering the F11 key like a demented idiot to reset the entire computer to its factory settings.

Which I did and which worked! Proof of which is this blog which I wrote after I had been in the Bay to visit my favourite shop, the St Vincent de Paul op-shop, which is always full of surprises. No, not this one but a CD of Hans Albers' "Der Blonde Hans" with such German evergreens as 'La Paloma', 'Nimm mich mit, Kapitän, auf die Reise', 'Das Herz von St. Pauli', 'Auf der Reeperbahn nachts um halb eins' and more - sample them here.

And, as always, I brought back a few books. The first one is a copy of Julian Barnes' "The Sense of an Ending" which I already have and have read. This one is in almost mint condition and will make a wonderful present to somebody I know who's just in the mood for such a little treasure. The other one is as much a travel book as a linguistic study, "The Prodigal Tongue - Dispatches from the Future of English". And the last is "The Dictionary of Wimps" (should that have been 'for Wimps'?) from which I cite a few definitions:

accountancy: a profession absolutely crawling with wimps. A chicken and egg situation ... did they become accountants because they were wimps, or did they embrace wimpotence because of accountancy itself? Whatever the answer the fact is that they became accountants because they lacked the balls to be lawyers and associate with criminals or cut people open like surgeons. celibacy: a vow a wimp pretends he has taken to conceal the fact that he couldn't get laid if he was a shagpile. culture: a collection of wimps growing on a camembert. Hitler: a much-misunderstood Austrian painter. Between bouts of painting, Hitler managed to conquer most of the known world. More, we venture, than can be said for Gainsborough or Van Gogh. keepsake: an eternal reminder of a wonderful holiday romance. Often resistant to penicillin. Koran: basically the same yarn as the Bible, but with better imagery, tighter plot and more action. Essentially the Bible as written by Robert Ludlum. monk: a man who takes vows of poverty, chastity and obedience when he enters a religious order. Wimps do the same when they marry. one night stand: the first night of a wimp's married life and the last he will get for a long time. swastika: one day Goering drew one of these squiggly shapes on the pad by the telephone. It caught the Fuhrer's eye, and the rest is history. Thermos: the Greek god of hot water. zen: a word used by German wimps when talking to their canaries, as in 'Hullo, who's ein pretty boy, zen?'

If you want to read more, stop being a wimp and go and buy the book!

 

Rest in Peace, Mr Reid

Robert Lauder REID 1910 - (22 Jan) 1996
Devoted Husband of Elsie. Father of Beth Ann and Margaret

 

I once knew an old curmudgeon in the Bay - a German migrant like me - who confided, halfway through a bottle of wine I had paid for, that, when his time came, he would burn everything instead of giving it away. "No one ever gave me anything", he complained.

"What about the immigration officer who approved your visa to come to this wonderful country?" I felt like asking, or "What about the bloke who gave you your first job while you were still trying to form a credible 'th' sound and to differentiate the 'v' from the 'w'?" But I didn't say any of this; instead, we just parted company and I haven't seen him since.

Unlike him, I am full of gratitude to people who gave me a helping hand on the rocky road of life, and there was none greater than Mr Robert Reid, manager of the Australia & New Zealand Bank, who gave me my first proper job just months after I'd stepped off the boat during which I had kept my head above water, first as a 'Trainee Manager' with Coles in Melbourne, and then as truckdriver for Adam Ingram & Son, a hardware store on Ipswich Street in Fyshwick, the industrial estate of Canberra.

I had answered a job advertisement in the 'Canberra Times' offering school-leavers (m.) a career in banking, with the (m.) standing for 'male' in those days before equal opportunities. Not that I knew that then, nor how to apply properly because I seem to remember that I replied on an aerogramme (remember 10 penny aerogrammes, those thin lightweight pieces of foldable and gummed paper for writing a letter for transit via airmail, in which the letter and envelope were one and the same?)

 

 

It must've set the tone for the interview because he was neither put off by my struggling English nor my references which were all in German (although his chauffeur Kevin Spielman who was Austrian may have had something to do with it, as he would have translated them for him).

Mr Reid not only gave me the job which allowed me to study towards a diploma with the Bankers' Institute but also a favourable reference ...

 

The Bank did not give references but merely 'Certificates of Service' but Mr Reid did

 

... which ultimately led to a career in chartered accounting. I have sometimes wondered if I might not still be driving a truck through Canberra had it not been for the kindness of this wonderful man.

A pilgrimage to his last resting place was the least I could do to give thanks to a man who gave me the biggest helping hand in my life.

 

 

May you rest in peace, Mr Reid! Your kindness has never been forgotten.

 

Der verlorene Horizont

 

Ein englischer Konsul im Punjab, sein Stellvertreter, eine englische Missionarin und ein amerikanischer Geschäftsmann sollen wegen drohender Unruhen aus der indischen Provinz evakuiert werden, geraten mit ihrem Flugzeug jedoch von der vorgesehenen Route ab und müssen in einem abgelegenen Tal des Himalaya notlanden. In Shangri-La, einer buddhistischen Klostersiedlung, finden die Vier Aufnahme. Sehr bald merken sie, daß diese Notlandug kein Zufall war, daß man die Fremden in Shangri-La erwartet hat. Die luxuriösen Wohnungen mitten in der Bergwildnis, die ruhige Vornehmheit der seltsam alterslos wirkenden Menschen, die stille Harmonie, die über den Lotosgärten schwebt - das alles läßt ahnen, daß dieser abgeschirmte Ort ein Geheimnis birgt.

 

Unser österreichischer Freund, 'Made Tanou', der in Bali ein besonderes 'Treehouse' für zahlende Gäste gebaut hat - siehe hier - braucht etwas besonderes um seinen Gästen in dieser besonderen Umgebung eine besondere Stimmung zu geben.

Ich schlug ihm vor den Gästen das Buch vom James Hilton, "Lost Horizon", zur Verfügung zu stellen oder noch besser, da die meisten seiner Gäste aus Deutschland sind, die deutsche Übersetzung "Der verlorene Horizont".

Vielleicht wäre es sogar noch besser falls sich seine Gäste während ihrer langen tropischen balinesischen Nächte einfach das Hörspiel anhörten:

 

 

(To listen to the audiobook in English, click here)

 

We are our memories

 

Yours truly outside the ANZ Bank Kingston A.C.T. in 1969

 

We don't just treasure our memories; we are our memories. And yet, memory is less like a collection of photographs than it is like a collection of impressionist paintings rendered by an artist who's taken considerable licence with his subject.

I wrote elsewhere about my years with the ANZ Bank - click here - and living at Barton House - click here - which shaped my future like no other period in my life, and I will always be grateful to the late Mr Robert Reid, the then manager of the ANZ Bank in Canberra, who hired me as a youngster, fresh off the boat from Europe, and gave me the chance of a new start in a new country.

While Mr Reid made the initial decision to hire me, it was John Burke as my immediate boss who had to make it work by putting up with my 'German-ness', both in accent and attitude, although he never took himself too seriously to make me feel that he was the boss. In fact, while I was just a lowly ledger examiner and trainee teller, John was a consummate teller - a teller of jokes, that is.

For us Germans jokes are no laughing matter. Maybe it's because we lack the flexibility of the English language whose vocabulary and grammar allow for endlessly amusing confusions of meanings, or because we killed all the funny people, but we simply fail to understand the rhetorical trifecta of irony, overstatement and understatement, of which John was - and still is - a past master. He just had to mention the war or say in a Monty Python-kind of voice "I haff a funny joke for jew and jew vill laugh" for my head to go down to suppress a convulsive giggle.

Back in those days I knew nothing, so John taught me all about the importance of the comma ("eats roots and leaves") and how to know when "you're in love". He also introduced me to psychoanalysis ("I talk to the trees, that's why they put me away") and politics (I can't remember which party it was he wanted me to join as a country member) and let me in on a banking secret ("once you withdraw, you lose all your interest"). John was a fun-sort of a boss. He got things done not by cracking a whip but by cracking a joke! Under his tutelage, my compulsory two years in Australia simply flew by.

I still knew a good German joke - just the one but I won't repeat it here because I know you won't find it funny - and could compound nouns with the best of them, but slowly the voices in my head began to speak in English and I learnt that "I'm sorry but all the banknotes are the same size" wasn't the correct answer to a customer asking for larger ones.

At the time, everyone over the age of thirty looked middle-aged, and everyone over fifty looked absolutely ancient, but here we are, almost sixty years later, belonging to the same category of the non-young, and turning our pasts into anecdotes which is one way of not losing the plot when you get old. I always thought growing old would take longer than this.

 

They're A Weird Mob

 

If YouTube, in their "wisdom", remove this movie again, try it here
To read the book, click here (SIGN UP (it's free!), LOG IN and BORROW

 

Regarded as a classic, this film, based on the book by the same name, takes a kind-hearted look at Sydney in the mid-60s. It's an Australia that no longer exists, making the film something of a social document worth watching.

The premise of the film is a reverse Crocdile Dundee, a fish-out-of-water comedy about a goofy, good-natured Italian who comes to Australia (rather than leaves it) and entertains the locals as he bumbles through day-to-day life, excusing his many faux pas with a nervous smile and a glassy-eyed look.

While it shows an Australia that no longer exists, it is the Australia which I came to love, warts and all, when I arrived here in 1965. Now almost sixty years old, the film is an entertaining time capsule and a compilation of the many things that haven't changed - from small gestures like returning shouts of beer at a bar to the ongoing city rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney (highlighted in a scene featuring a cameo from Graham Kennedy) and the generous and welcoming spirit of the Australian people.

"They're A Weird Mob" is a warming and optimistic story which takes me back to a less cynical time and culture which is light years away from today's competitive, money-chasing reality. As John O'Grady writes in his entertaining book (which was published as early as 1957), "Anyone who thinks he recognises himself in these pages, probably does." I do!

 

Wenn das Zuhause immer unterwegs ist

 

Reporterin Elisa Luzius verbringt sieben Tage an Bord der "MS Seestern"
und erlebt den harten Alltag auf einem Frachtschiff.

 

Jeder kennt sie – die langen schmalen Schiffe, die gemächlich auf den deutschen Flüssen and Kanälen schippern. Kapitän Franz Schramm fährt sein Schiff, die "MS Seestern" schon in sechster Generation. Der Fluss ist seine Heimat, denn als selbstständiger Binnenschiffer lebt er mit seiner Frau Sonja auf seinem Frachter.

„Du könntest mich eher erschlagen, als dass ich von Bord gehen muss“, sagt Franz, der sich auf seiner schwimmenden Insel am wohlsten fühlt. Allerdings bereiten ihm Wirtschaftskrise und Wetter immer mehr Probleme.

Franz fährt pausenlos ohne einen freien Tag um seine Schulden abzuzahlen. Dazu kommt extreme Trockenheit mit Niedrigwasser im Wechsel mit schweren Unwettern und Hochwasser – Wetterbedingungen, die das Fahren teilweise unmöglich machen. Obwohl die Binnenschifffahrt einen wichtigen Anteil des Güterverkehrs in Deutschland ausmacht und die Anzahl der Transporte wieder steigt, muss sich Franz als selbstständiger Binnenschiffer regelrecht „über Wasser halten“.

In 2015 feierte er ein Jubiläum: dann war er schon seit 30 Jahren auf dem betagten Schiff gefahren. Ein neues kann er sich nicht leisten. Nach fast 30 Jahren ist die "Seestern" noch immer nicht ganz sein Eigentum: ein Drittel des Schiffes gehört immer noch der Bank. Franz' Alltag ist ein Überlebenskampf. Er ist einer der wenigen Partikuliere, die es noch gibt. Das bedeutet: Ihm gehört ein einziges Schiff, auf dem er lebt und mit dem er fährt. Seine Konkurrenten sind Großreedereien mit größeren und moderneren Schiffen, die oft effizienter sind.

Seit ein paar Jahren bin ich jetzt schon mit dem Franz und der Sonja durch Email in Verbindung. Und da erfahre ich wie es so ist wenn das Zuhause 24 Stunden, 7 Tage in der Woche immer unterwegs ist. Da bleibt nicht viel übrig von der „Schiffer-Romantik“ von der man träumt wenn man am Ufer steht und die Schiffe beobachtet.

Und wenn ich wissen will wo sie sind, dann gehe ich zum vesselfinder.com.

 

Two years ago to the day

 

 

Some people have lots of friends, mainly because they can't spell the word 'acquaintances'. My best friend ever, Noel, was almost a lifelong friend as we first met aboard the good ship PATRIS that took me back to Europe after my compulsory first two years in Australia in 1967, and we remained friends until his untimely death in 1995.

Ours was not a mushy friendship: we only occasionally met which was usually around Christmas because that was the only time we both got time off from work and not because we were celebrating Christmas; neither did we celebrate each other's birthday simply because we didn't know each other's birthday, and if we had known it, we wouldn't have celebrated it anyway; which also meant that we never knew each other's age which seemed similar since I've always felt older than I really am, and Noel seemed younger than he really was. As I found out only after his death, he had been a whole twenty-five years older which seemed to explain the inexplicable when he suddenly passed away.

Noel's passing left a big hole in my life, and I didn't find another like-minded friend until by chance I met Ian Grindrod down here in little Nelligen. It was an almost instant meeting of the minds, and we had endless discussions about books, politics, philosophy, world affairs, in fact, just about anything because Ian knew something about everything.

He was the most knowledgeable and the most widely-read man I had ever met, and the kindest and most helpful as he helped me repaint my unit in Sydney, convert my garage into a library, and scores of lesser things. It almost became a catch phrase: "If you need help, call Ian!"

In more recent years he had become more withdrawn. Some personal tragedies and worsening health issues made him shun other people's company, although I tried to stay in touch with the occasional phone call. The last one was in May 2020, after which I emailed him:

"It was certainly good to talk to you. Raise any of the subjects that we discussed and you'd get nothing but a blank stare from the rest of the unwashed majority, so what's stopping us to have more such conversation? I almost dread phoning you - even though I want to keep the connection alive - because I can sense I am intruding and you are not telling me to piss off only because of your misunderstood "British" politeness. You came from Coventry, so send me there, if that is what is on your mind.😎 Cheers Peter"

His reply was immediate:

"No, Peter, I won't be sending you to Coventry as I do savour the flavour of these conversations. Why can't there be more? There can, but I'll leave it to you to pick up the phone as I feel I'm slipping into geriatric agoraphobia probably stemming from a retiring personality, health issues and this terrible run of external events. But tell me, do you ever feel contented with your lifestyle? I rarely have that luxury as I feel there is always something driving me on. Maybe I need a Freud-like interlocutor. Anyway, as one of those historical British characters remarked 'if at first you don't succeed ...' I need intelligent intrusions to get me off the self-imposed treadmill of chores that I fill my life with. Thanks for the call and the message and call again. Cheers Ian P.S. The last book I got from Booktopia was "DARK EMU" authored by Bruce Pascoe. Don't think it would sit comfortably with you but gives a little-known perspective on our First Nation people."

And then came the above text message on 19 January 2022! Ian, remember the garage we converted into a library? After you'd done such a wonderful job with all that woodpanelling under the domed roof, I half-jokingly suggested we call it the Ian Grindrod Memorial Library. Well, I am no longer joking: the Ian Grindrod Memorial Library it is! Every time I sit in it, I shall remember you - and every other time as well!

Rest in Peace, my friend!

 

Another pourquoi story

 

 

Why Nelligen?" people ask me. "Why not?" is my short reply. Here's the full story: It all began sometime in 1991 when I helped an acquaintance at the HARMONIE German Club in Canberra with an income tax problem.

When I refused payment, not only because I was no longer a tax agent but also because we were both from the same (c)old country, he insisted I could stay in his holiday cottage at some little place called Nelligen. "It's on the Clyde River just before Batemans Bay", he said. "You'll love it!"

For several months, I didn't find the time to drive to the coast. When I eventually did I had almost forgotten the offer. Luckily, I didn't blink as I drove across the Nelligen bridge on the way to Batemans Bay and so spotted this tiny village nestled alongside the Clyde River.

At the General Store I asked for directions to the cottage "belonging to the German carpenter", and was shown to # 21 Sproxton Lane across the river. The cottage was locked but he had told me that the key was under the watertank and that I could make myself at home. Which I did and which set me on my own quest to find a little place in Nelligen.

At the time, Nelligen was a place forgotten even by real estate agents and nothing was for sale except a few empty building blocks. One such block overlooked the Clyde River from its location in Nelligen Place. I could imagine sitting there on the verandah and taking in the views. Which is exactly what a chap was doing just two blocks away. I walked up and asked if I could join him.

Soon we were not only sharing the same views but also memories of people and places we both had known as "Sandy" Sandilands and his wife Betty had also lived and worked in Rabaul in New Guinea and on Thursday Island - in fact, their daughter was born there! I felt at home at once! A few weeks later I was the proud owner of a block of land in Nelligen Place!

I wanted to build a beautiful little Classic Country Cottage. However, a retired public servant who occupied a small log cabin next to me did what public servants do: be a pain in the coccyx ! He objected to my building plans - TWICE! - on some obscure grounds. This delayed me long enough to find a much better place across the river. And that's how I came to buy "Riverbend"!

"Riverbend" had been auctioned in August 1992. I went to the auction as a spectator knowing that the reserve price was outside my range. It must have been outside everybody else's as well because it didn't sell. More than a year later, in November 1993, the owners, who had bought the property only four years earlier, accepted my much-reduced offer.

(Only after I had bought "Riverbend" did I find out that the previous owners had been forced out by some nasty neighbours. I swore to myself that if they ever tried the same with me, I wouldn't budge. They did, and I didn't! Oh, and I did go back to thank the public servant for objecting to my plans so that I could buy this much better and bigger and waterfront property. Last time I looked his mouth was still open!)

 

 

"Riverbend" has been my home now for over 30 years. As they say, there's no place like home and, as evidenced by the tee-shirt, Nelligen is right up there with every other great metropolis.

 

"Every rest gave birth to new longing"

To read the whole book, click here.

 

The most fundamental delight which literature can offer has something to do with the perception or discovery of truth, not necessarily a profound or complex or earthshaking truth, but a particular truth of some order. This "epiphany" comes at the moment of recognition when the reader's experience is reflected back at him.

This is what happened to me when idly, and to pass the time on a grey day, I picked up "Wandering: Notes and Sketches" (German title: "Wanderung: Aufzeichnungen") by Hermann Hesse and suddenly found myself totally absorbed in what the backcover had described as 'a fine antidote to the anxiety-provoking pressures of today.'

Let the following excerpts speak for themselves:

There is so much more in this serene little book. "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us", wrote Kafka. This book fits this description. And, being a book, no matter how complex or difficult to understand it may seem to be, when you have finished it, you can, if you wish, go back to the beginning, read it again, and thus understand that which is difficult and, with it, understand life that little bit better.

Here's to the joy of reading! And to more of Hermann Hesse's writing!

 

Childhood memories recur, like a door suddenly slammed by the wind in the distant wing of an old house

The only photo I have of my stepbrother Borkhardt

 

The door suddenly slammed on this morning twelve months ago as we were getting ready to drive down to the Bay for our weekly aquatherapy, when my stepsister Karin messaged me: "Hallo Peter, heute ist Borkhardt verstorben. Es war sehr plötzlich. Damit hatte keiner gerechnet. Grüße Karin"

We were a totally dysfunctional family. I had a father and stepmother, and a mother and stepfather, and three sisters and a brother, and a stepsister and a stepbrother. This may sound like too much of a good thing, which it was, and which is why I left. First from father-and-stepmother to mother-and-stepfather, then from mother-and-stepfather back to father-and-stepmother. Then, with schooling done, FULLY AWAY!

Australia suited me because it was about the farthest I could get away, and I've only been back twice: once at the end of my compulsory two years in Australia in 1967, and again in 1984 for my father's funeral.

Still, receiving the message that my stepbrother Borkhardt had suddenly died at the age of 73 put me on notice that there is such a thing as family, and also that death comes equally to all of us, and makes all of us equal when it comes. John Donne said that, and how right he was.

How reading changed my life

 

  Bild Zeitung   dated Thursday, 30 Jan 1964
the advertisement in the bottom right-hand corner changed my life!

 

 

The German   Bild Zeitung    was like television in print: plenty of pictures (BILD means 'image') and sensationalised commentary. Sold for 10 Pfennig, or the eqivalent of a box of matches, everyone could afford it and, with just four pages, read it all in one sitting - literally!

Because, being just four pages, it could easily be folded - lengthwise to be slipped down one's trouser leg, or twice across to fit into one's back pocket - and taken to the office loo which in those days was the only place where one was allowed to take some time off from work.

Speed reading hadn't been invented yet and so, in an office with over twenty people and just one windowless loo, slow readers could be a bit on the nose, made worse on a Monday morning when the reporting of the weekend's footie results in the "Kicker Fussball-Illustrierte" slowed down some football-mad readers' bowel movements even further.

Such were the conditions in my office when I was an articled clerk in Germany in the early 60s, so is it any wonder I emigrated to Australia? But it wouldn't have happened without the   Bild Zeitung   which at the time carried advertisements by the Australian Embassy showing a smiley face in the shape of the Australian continent with rays of sunshine around the edges under the header "Come to sunny Australia!" - in German, of course, or I wouldn't have understood it.

 

"Do you know Australia?
Information about Australia, a young and aspiring nation, and the opportunities awaiting you there, are available from the Australian Information and Immigration Agency
2 Hamburg 1, Mönckebergstrasse 11, Phone 33 49 82.
For more information complete this coupon (in block letters) and mail it to us."

 

No, I didn't write to the embassy while sitting there in that windowless loo, but I did so shortly afterwards, which is how I finished up in sunny Australia, the land of wide open spaces - and plenty of loos with windows in them! - and the freedom to read a newspaper even at work.

As for the 10 Pfennig   Bild Zeitung  , it's still around today, albeit a lot dearer. And I am still in Australia, too, a lot older but still grateful for having read that ad in one of my "quieter" moments.

 

Ruhe in Frieden

 

* 24.3.1929 - ✝ 24.9.1998

 

 

Es began alles in 1991 - oder war es 1992? Ein Bekannter vom HARMONIE German Club in Canberra hatte Steuerprobleme und als ehemaliger Steuerberater half ich ihm aus - ohne Bezahlung natürlich denn wir waren ja beide ehemalige Deutsche.

 

Tony Finsterer war einer der 150 "Jennings Germans" - siehe hier

 

Als ehemaliger Deutscher - und dazu noch Saubayer - wollte er mir, dem Saupreussen, auch einen Gefallen tun und lud mich zu seinem Ferienhaus an der Küste ein. Für eine lange Zeit ging das gar nicht denn ich war ja ein Selbständiger und arbeitete fast jeden Tag, sieben Tage die Woche.

Eines Tages war es dann soweit und ich fuhr die 150 Kilometer zur Küste runter. Fast wäre ich an Nelligen vorbei gefahren aber ich erinnerte mich noch gerade an den ehemaligen Deutschen, wußte aber nicht wo er wohnte. Im kleinen Laden im Dorf fragte ich sie: "Kennt hier jemand den deutschen Zimmermann Tony Finsterer? Der sollte hier wohnen!"

Natürlich kannte jeder jeden in diesem Dorf und mir wurde der Weg zu seinem Haus am anderen Flußufer erklärt: Nummer 21 Sproxtons Lane.

 

Tonys Ferienhaus - siehe hier

 

Da war alles verschlossen als ich ankam. Ich rief Tony zuhause in Canberra an: "Ich bin bei deinem Ferienhaus! Wo bist du?" "Klettre übern Zaun. Der Schlüssel ist unter der Wassertonne. Und mach's dir gemütlich", sagte er.

Und so verbrachte ich ein wunderschönes Wochenende an der Küste. Und dann noch eins und noch eins und noch eins bis ich mir schließlich im Dezember 1993 mein eigenes Ferienhaus am Ende der gleichen Straße kaufte: Nummer 35-37 Sproxtons Lane, aber jeder nennt es "Riverbend".

Tony und ich trafen uns dann noch für mehrere Jahre, entweder bei mir oder bei ihm, und er kochte seine Linsensuppe und ich brachte das Bier. Dann hörte ich plötzlich daß er im September 1998 gestorben war.

Ruhe in Frieden, Tony! Ohne dich hätte ich "Riverbend" nie gefunden!

 

---

 

P.S. Seine Familie verkaufte das Ferienhaus im Mai 2001 für $288.250. Das war vor den großen Preissteigerungen denn der neue Besitzer verkaufte es neun Jahre später für $900.000. Und heute ist es fast doppelt so viel wert!

 

I'm a dawn watcher

 

 

There was a time when I stayed up to watch the sun rise; these days I get up for it: often as early as four, or five, but never later than six o'clock. I am addicted to sunrise, that mysterious still time before reality is revealed, before shapes emerge, when everything floats nebulously in that queer light that makes you think of the beginning of time.

Long before the huge garbage truck comes hissing down the lane on a Friday morning, long before the efficiency of the plumbing in the house is put noisily to the test, I sit on the verandah with a big thick mug of tea and watch the world reveal itself to be pretty much what it was yesterday.

I am lucky to have watched the sun rise from atop the Shwedagon Pagoda, from tropical islands in the South Seas and bobbing fishing boats in the Aegean Sea, and I shall never forget watching the sun rise from the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion.

I don't know whether it is true that dawn is the time when the majority of people choose to enter the world or to leave it, but it does seem to be a suitable hour. I should count myself lucky to push the   Publish   button on my last blog as I watch the sun turn the Clyde into a river of gold.

Until that happens, I shall continue to be a dawn watcher. It's why I'm so hopeless in the afternoon.